Black Friday used to be an American thing. But, like Halloween before it, the phenomenon of a blockbuster end-of-November sales period has taken off outside the US.
Across Australia, a wave of advertising has surged – promoting discounted appliances, electricity plans, clothes and just about anything else you could think of – reaching its climax this week.
It is on track to eclipse the Boxing Day sales as Australia’s biggest retail event within the next two years, especially as more people shop online, according to Robert Crawford, a professor of advertising at RMIT University.
“Unfortunately, I’d have to say I don’t see a sustainable way of doing this, because of the very nature of it being geared towards overconsumption,” Crawford says.
The Australian Retailers Association (ARA) expects a record $6.7bn to be spent from Friday to Monday – 5.5% more than in the same period last year – based on analysis by market researcher Roy Morgan.
While major retailers – and plenty of smaller labels – have heavily promoted their products for Black Friday, some brands marketed as ethically minded have chosen to entirely avoid taking part in the sales.
Adam Ferrier, a consumer psychologist and founder of the marketing agency Thinkerbell, says Black Friday has become popular in Australia because “cultural moments become big when businesses can make money out of them”.
“The Black Friday sale does have utility on an individual level,” he says. “If you’ve got your shit together and you decide to take advantage of it, you can genuinely buy something cheaper before prices go up for Christmas.”
But Ferrier says it “does pose an issue in terms of overconsumption” at a “collective level”.
Johanna Ryle-Howe says her Australian-made clothing label, Caves Collect, has never participated in Black Friday, as she believes the sales drive “rampant consumerism that can’t be sustained by the planet”.
“[Consumers] buy things they don’t want or need, and brands build crazy profit margins into their pricing to accommodate for expected exponential sales during Black Friday,” she says.
“Someone is paying at the end of the day, whether it’s the consumer, or the environment, or the people in the supply chain, or the shareholders of these companies.”
Sister Studios, which produces its clothes in Melbourne, has also opted out of the sales because of concerns about overconsumption.
The label’s co-founder Emma Cutri, says the high volume of advertising, especially targeted ads on social media, create a sense of urgency that encourages people to buy things they don’t need.
Cutri says she already has to charge more for clothes because of the higher cost of manufacturing clothes in Australia compared with overseas.
“[Bigger brands’] pants probably cost $10 to make, so they can put them on sale for 50 bucks and it’s still a bargain. Whereas for me to go on sale, I’ll end up at a loss,” she says.
“Obviously I do go on sale because that’s the nature of the beast, but the pressure of a Black Friday sale, I don’t think it applies to an independent Melbourne label.”
However, the bamboo underwear label Boody, which has an ethical B-Corp certification, is running Black Friday sales.
The company says it “works closely with a handful of manufacturers” in China and Vietnam to produce its garments offshore.
Boody’s co-chief executive, Elliot Midalia, says the company used not to take part in Black Friday, which he previously regarded as a “consumerism, 1990s, Americana thing”.
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“If I take a step back, Australia would wake up in late November to everyone in the US trampling each other to get into stores,” he says. “E-commerce broke that international barrier.”
After debating whether or not to join the sales this year, Midalia says they decided they needed to compete with other brands in order to offer consumers a cheaper way to buy a more ethical product.
“Our belief is access to a sustainable brand shouldn’t be an issue,” he says.
Kristy Barber, who runs the Melbourne-made label Kuwaii, says her “slow fashion” business has grown to a size where it “has to take the opportunity to take part” in some kind of promotion at this time of year.
So Barber offered 20% discounts last week.
“We do want to allow people to buy into ethical fashion as well, so sales can be a way for customers to feel that it’s more accessible and inclusive,” she says. “But we have always tried to stand apart from the Black Friday event itself.”
The sales – and the associated packaging from the products sold – come after the federal government set targets of reducing total waste by 10% per person, achieving an 80% average recovery rate from all waste streams by 2030.
Jeff Angel, the director of the Total Environment Centre, says virtually all of the estimated 150,000 tonnes of household soft plastics are going to landfill.
Angel says the nation’s environment ministers will meet on 10 December to consider further reforms.
“They have three options,” Angel says. “One is business as usual, a second one is just having some design targets for packaging and a third one is a full on reduce and responsibility scheme, which is obviously our preferred option.”
Angel argues Black Friday is “just another marketing and promotion activity” that is generating waste.
The retailers’ association takes a different view, with its chief industry officer, Fleur Brown, saying the sales are an opportunity to “have a bit of fun with the retail calendar”, after consumers went through “sensory deprivation” during the pandemic.
“Fundamentally, Aussies do love their shopping,” she said.
